Posts Tagged ‘Nicholas King’

In Celebration of the Life of My Uncle, Clinton Samuel King, Jr., May 4, 1928 to November 2, 2012

Written at home at Rough Rock, March 6, 2016

The Story of the Life and Love of a Self-Made Man and How to Die at Peace

Dawn, American River From Fair Oaks Bluffs, Fair Oaks, California, 2012 by David Leland Hyde. This photograph was made at Uncle Clint’s House the day of his Celebration of Life. (Click Image to See Large.)

My mother, Ardis King Hyde, descended from early Northern California pioneer families. Her parents, Clinton S. King and Elsie Van Maren King both had grandparents who owned large ranches in the Sacramento area. The Van Maren ranch consisted of 640 acres of what is now Citrus Heights. Van Maren Boulevard is a familiar Sacramento thoroughfare.

During the Great Depression, my great, great grandfather named Greenback Lane, another major artery in that part of Sacramento. Greenback Lane originally was the ranch road into the main house, which stood where a shopping mall does now. My great, great grandfather said at the time that because his paper dollars were worth so little he might as well use them to pave the lane. “I could just as well call it my Greenback Lane,” he said, and the name stuck.

Mom’s Dad was actually Clinton Samuel King the second, or Junior, but he never went by Junior. Mom was the oldest of four children, three of which were boys. Mom’s oldest brother, Clinton S. King, truly was the third, but he went by Junior. Clinton S. King, Jr. was three years younger than mom, Nick was five years younger and Van was 13 years younger. My mother passed on at age 74 in 2002, which was a surprise. We all expected her to live much longer. Same goes for two out three of my uncles who both passed on in 2012: Nick in April and Clint in November. Van King is my mother’s only sibling left, my only living uncle.

I wrote a tribute to my Uncle Nick in 2012, but I have not had a chance to write one for my Uncle Clint. For a while it did not fit into the flow of blog posts. For longer I was not sure what I wanted to say. We all had a family disagreement over the family cabin at Lake Tahoe and Uncle Clint and my parents were on opposite sides of it. Grandma left the cabin to her four children to keep in the family and enjoy in perpetuity. However, two of the four siblings, Uncle Nick and my mother never used the cabin and paid part of the expenses. Eventually we all agreed Uncle Clint would buy out his three siblings.

After Grandma, Grandpa and my mother passed on, Uncle Nick and Dad needed the money from selling the cabin. Uncle Van was torn on whether to sell his portion or not, but finally did. Uncle Clint was irate with us for wanting to sell and for forcing him to buy us out. From our perspective, paying for even a small portion of the expenses and having the extra headache was draining. Dad and I were looking at possibly spending $4,000 to $6,000 a month for a live-in caregiver or to place him in a home.

In the end, it turns out that Uncle Clinton S. King, Jr. was the “bigger man” of all of us. He also could fortunately afford to be the bigger man. He worked extremely hard his entire life so as to have enough money to pay for what was important. To him, family was everything, as was the shared family cabin with so much family history. Even after the dispute over the cabin, we kept in touch with Uncle Clint precisely because family was important to all of us. In the end, Uncle Clint was right not just about the importance of family, but about the cabin as a meeting place for the family. The ownership of the meetup space now no longer shared, the family has dispersed.

This has been the saddest outcome of the dispute. Uncle Clint was angry about the cabin for some time, but he never quit treating us like family if we called him on the phone or otherwise needed to communicate with him. Some people in our family and others profess to rate family as a high priority, but at the same time seem to be almost looking for a reason not to keep in touch. Some people dislike their families, or rather, they are put off by the traits in themselves they do not like that run in the family. Some people mistakenly believe they can leave behind their own flaws in common with others of the same blood by cutting all ties. Some people may need to do this in some families to avoid further wounding, but many only make wounds deeper by disavowing their families rather than looking inward to work on themselves. Every flaw I have seen in family members, when I look closely, I have found in myself. Similarly every character trait other family members find unattractive in me, I notice they have in themselves, sometimes in a more severe form. The goal in life is not to change family members or even ultimately the world, but for each of us individually to improve the world by changing ourselves. When I change the world changes.

Cousin Gwenn and Uncle Clint, Fair Oaks, California, 2012 by David Leland Hyde. I made this photograph about six months before Uncle Clint passed on. (Click Image to see Large.)

After my father passed on and I was the last on my side of the family, the wounds were slow to heal, but in time Uncle Clint and I became nearly as close, if not just as close, and in some ways closer than ever. I remember my Uncle Clint, on the whole throughout his life, being supportive, wise, fun and inspirational, more than anything else. He had a strong personality, a powerful will and was a formidable opponent, but he also had a big, soft, generous heart that held a special place for any of his blood kin and for people in general.

Uncle Clint, like my mother and my other two uncles, was hard on his own children, my cousins. He could be critical, and though this was sometimes cutting and hard to take, it was never meant to be malicious or to tear people down, but was motivated by him wanting his offspring and the rest of us cousins to be better people. He was just as hard or harder on himself. Self-discipline was one of his strengths. He was a self-starter and a self-educated man. He was an expert witness for the State of California and in other cases that needed a solid professional engineering opinion. He had a reputation as a pillar of his profession and as a community leader and philanthropist in Northern California.

He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in civil engineering and served as an officer in the Korean War. As a registered engineer in both California and Nevada, he led studies and construction planning for drainage and flood control that continue to operate and set precedent today. He worked beyond California and Nevada throughout the West in planning military installations and military bases. He was a founding partner of Spink Corporation and later spent 22 years in private practice.

He was always physically active with presidential and other leading roles in such organizations as the South Hills Racquet Club, the Bing Maloney Golf Club, Kiwanis, the Sacramento Swimming and Diving League, Sacramento Pioneer Association, Del Paso Country Club, the Crocker Art Museum, the University of California Alumni Association and the Arden Hills Swimming and Tennis Club.

Uncle Clint started from humble beginnings as we all did, but he became a self-made man. When Sacramento was still a small city, with the old downtown fairly run-down and a little rough as neighborhoods go, my uncle, out of sheer love for old buildings, bought a historic Victorian mansion at a low price. He began to tear out walls, refurbish and refinish the old Victorian that he called “Vickie.” He did all of the work himself, nearly always by himself. He sanded floors, rebuilt historical banisters, moved doorways and remodeled the mansion into seven beautifully appointed, contemporary, yet historically interesting apartments.

At the same time, others began to renovate buildings in downtown Sacramento. Uncle Clint gradually bought a few more Victorian mansions to remodel into apartments. Sacramento was one of the earlier economic turnarounds of a downtown city. Rebuilding downtowns became a trend and then a nationwide phenomenon that continues today. Over the years my uncle gradually moved from middle-class neighborhoods into upper-middle class neighborhoods, until eventually, the last 20 years of his life he lived with his third wife Aunt Charla in a tasteful villa in Fair Oaks on the bluffs overlooking the American River Parkway. He had outlived two other wives: Aunt Shirley, the mother of my cousins, and Aunt Lou. All three of these great ladies were good aunts to us cousins.

Uncle Clint and Aunt Shirley often hosted our Thanksgiving gatherings of the whole family including my mother’s three brothers, spouses and my 10 cousins, later 14 cousins. When Uncle Clint was married to Aunt Lou, the tradition continued. Each of my uncles and my mother took turns hosting the big Thanksgiving gathering, but Uncle Clint and Aunt Lou hosted it the most often. Later when Uncle Clint and Aunt Charla lived on the bluffs in Fair Oaks, we did not have the large family Thanksgiving gatherings as often, but they hosted more than one family get together including a smaller family reunion. When we had big family reunions with all of my second cousins and relatives, we had to rent larger venues because the numbers attending were in the 100s. We went to one big family reunion at the Lewelling Ranch in St. Helena. The Lewellings are semi-distant relatives of the Van Marens and thus the Kings and Hydes.

Uncle Clint told stories at these events and was often in charge of the BBQ or other key aspects of meal preparation. He worked the hardest on any collaborative project. He and Aunt Lou invited us to visit a number of different golf resorts he had shares in. Later he and Aunt Charla bought a golf home on the big island of Hawaii on the Kona Coast where my parents visited them. I remember Uncle Clint most as a good life coach. He always had the best advice and moral perspective on many situations. His business savvy and street smarts made him the kind of man any young man would feel proud to have as an uncle and be happy to spend time with having some of the self-sufficient mindset rub off.

As a boy and as a young man, I was most fortunate to have Uncle Clint for guidance. I remember him talking to me about how to choose a college. He asked a lot of questions before giving suggestions. I remember him being highly interested in my experiences while I was away at boarding school from 10th through 12th grades. I did not see him often during this time period, but he wanted to know all about it when I did see him. He always took an interest in people and his own nieces and nephews in particular. He would ask us questions that nobody else would ever think of that made us understand how much he cared. He would then offer some wisdom regarding his own experience that related to ours. He knew how to laugh and have fun, especially in a gathering of people. All my uncles were fun when we all came together. We cousins had a special bond because during our younger years we saw each other much more than most cousins do. This was good for me as an only child growing up in the mountains.

Growing up my parents chose not to have television in our home. I could not wait to get down to Sacramento to visit Grandma or one of my uncles to watch TV. Uncle Clint was generally not much for TV, but he sure liked his sports. He would talk about football, basketball or baseball, whichever was in season with his sons and daughters and our other cousins. Uncle Clint’s son, Clinton Samuel King IV was the oldest cousin, eight years older than me. He also mentored me a lot in life, as well as wrestling me down a few times when I was a bit too much of a smart aleck. Uncle Clint passed his wisdom down to me and to the other younger cousins through his son too. All of us who knew Uncle Clint have a bit we learned from him that we pass along to the world. Uncle Clint helped me learn to be stronger, warmer and more forgiving to people.

Uncle Clint died of cancer. When he became ill, he “mellowed out,” took fewer things personally, forgave people easier and let go of most situations that he did not feel right about. He lived the end of his life surrounded by love and family. This was his greatest wisdom and made it easier to take the pain he endured at times before he passed on. He was not peaceful about dying, he resisted dying until the end, but he was at peace about the people in his life. Now I miss him and think about so many more times I wish I had spent time with him, but I also am grateful we had the good times we did. We could have lost that time if we had not let our differences go. Many families lose each other completely through selfish disputes and arguments over who is right and who has done something wrong. Holding onto grudges ruins lives in many ways, not least of which is making the grudge holder miserable at least subconsciously where it does the most damage to health. Staying angry at a relative is like taking poison and hoping the relative will suffer.

Many New Releases Added And Others Revised In My Portfolio On PhilipHyde.com

Besides several images from the blog post, “My 12 ‘Greatest Hits’ Of 2012,” now on display large on PhilipHyde.com, many other newly released DLH images are now on view and a number of previously released photographs are now revised and updated. See the David Leland Hyde Portfolio at the end of 16 Philip Hyde Portfolios on the Philip Hyde Photography website and acquire a fine art archival lightjet chromogenic print out of a limited edition of only 100.

In this blog post, I will share a little about the making of a few of the newly released photographs now in the revised portfolio. In the blog posts, “Northern California Beaches: Misty Sonoma Coast” and “Actor, Photographer, Apple Farmer And 1960s Activist Nicholas King’s Memorial,” I included a few of the landscape photographs from the Sonoma County Pacific Ocean Coast and the Mendocino County Pacific Ocean Coast. Some of these California beaches and rocky cliffs can now be seen in the revised portfolio. One image that did not appear in “My 12 ‘greatest hits’ of 2012,” from my Sonoma and Mendocino Coasts trip, that now appears in my portfolio is “Cypress Trees, Point Arena Odd Fellows Cemetery.” Also, a photograph from 2009 of Utah called, “Mesas, Boulders, San Rafael Swell,” that I posted with my guest blog post on Greg Russell’s Alpenglow Images, “Make Your Own Tripod Tracks,” has itself also been revised and added to the remade portfolio gallery.

On the same trip through Utah in 2009, I also made the vertical, “Sandstone Boulders Against The Sky.” This photograph was one of many I made that morning. I left Boulder, Colorado the evening before and spent the night just past the Green River crossing where Interstate 70 climbs up onto the Colorado Plateau. It was a bitter cold winter night with blowing snow and howling gale force winds. In the morning my Ford Van was caked with frozen snow, ice and road grime. I stopped there to sleep only for a few hours in the middle of the night and woke up just as the light began to dawn on the snowy landscape. The desert lands of Southern Utah came to live with new definition and beauty in the fresh snow. In the early morning my hands, nose and other extremities felt like they would surely get frost bite, but I persisted to photograph all morning. By late morning the snow was beginning to melt off in the surprisingly warm sun, a welcome contrast to the cold of the night before. As the snow melted, intricate and visually fascinating snow patterns were left against the red rock sandstone background. Also, the light softened and became more diffuse as high clouds moved back in. The sandstone boulders appeared in many of my photographs, but this image in particular also captured the sky and the light.

“Dawn, American River From Fair Oaks Bluffs,” I made in 2012 from another Uncle, Clint King’s home the morning of his memorial service. I got up about a half hour before sunrise to be able to catch the sunrise and the mist on the American River. Fair Oaks is a beautiful bedroom suburb town on the outskirts of Sacramento. My Uncle Clint was a self-made man who did very well. I will write a future blog tribute to him as I did for my Uncle Nick King. The tribute will also contain more images of the event and related subjects.

After my Uncle Clint’s memorial celebration in November 2012, I drove to Livermore to see the Golden Decade Legacy Show at Figurehead Gallery that included my father’s vintage and authorized archival prints, Ansel Adams prints, Minor White prints and the black and white photography of other students of theirs from the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute. After viewing the exhibition, I attempted to photograph at the Livermore Gravel Pits as Dad did in 1949. However, due to liability, they would only let me photograph on a day where the office foreman could accompany me. I tried to sneak some photos, but an upper level manager drove over and yelled obscenities at me.

I drove from there down to photograph some architecture of the restored old homes in downtown Pleasanton, California. However, still craving more gritty fare, I also stopped under the freeway to photograph graffiti and street art. On the way home through Stockton, I also exited in downtown there, but did not find much I wanted to photograph until I found my way to the Deep Water Port of Stockton. Again, I ran into management that would not allow photographs without contacting the corporate office and coming back another day. One of the homeland security guards told me how to drive around to the other side of the San Joaquin River and photograph the Port of Stockton from a distance. This is how I made the photograph, “Port of Stockton” that also appears in the updated portfolio.

In 2009 in Death Valley National Park, I first came across the phenomena of photographers overrunning an iconic landscape. I descended into Death Valley during the evening magic hour, made some images near Panamint Springs and a few other stops on the way down to Stovepipe Wells and the Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes. I hit the sand running in the Twilight hour. The dunes were heavily beaten with footprints, as I suppose there had not been any windstorms recently. Still, I managed to make a number of good images including some of the classic tallest dune there at Mesquite Flats with some Amargosa Range mountains in the background. I was satisfied, short on time and the campground and all lodging was full. I moved on to the Furnace Creek area and parked for the night in my Van in the hotel parking lot.

Two Horses With Live Oak, “Inveration,” Sierra Foothills Near Dunlap, California, copyright 2009 David Leland Hyde.

The next morning I woke up in the dark and headed out to Zabriski Point. I was amazed to find that even an hour before sunrise, the parking lot already had around 10 vehicles in it. I took the paved road width trail up to Zabriski Point proper and found close to a dozen photographers already set up waiting for the sun to come up. I stopped briefly in the paved stone-encircled corral where more cattle were gathering by the minute to photograph the sunrise cliché.

I walked back toward the parking lot, but saw a small dirt trail taking off for the ridge that angled toward Manly Beacon. I took this trail and the crowd of gathering photographers soon faded into the distance. I followed the dirt trail along the ridge top marveling at the vast open space of the Badlands and how not one photographer could be seen in the entire Death Valley landscape, except in the small confines of one paved trail overlook. I made a few photographs of Manly Beacon, an icon, by any definition, though captured from an angle that only a few take the time to see because it requires a little extra walking. The irony is that the sunrise all those other photographers were waiting for never happened. The sun never came up and never came out. it remained cloudy, as you can see in my photograph. I thought about how my Dad would most probably have hiked way down into the Badlands with his large format view camera, miles from the parking lot, lost amidst the bare earth of the erosion landforms. I remembered being teased in school for being different. At that moment in the Death Valley landscape, all I felt was gratitude for my upbringing. My parents taught me not only to think “outside the box,” but more importantly to live outside the box… and as Robert Frost said, “That has made all the difference.”

On that note I introduce “Two Horses With Live Oak, ‘Inveration,’ Sierra Foothills Near Dunlap, California,” and “Urban Railroad, Ultra Fine, Reno, Nevada.” These two 2009 photographs are what I call Photoshop experimental photography art. “Inveration” is a made up word to describe my Photoshop process for that image.

Please share: what do you think of these experiments and the other images? Do you live outside the box and away from the herd?

Not His Talented Acting Or Photography, But His Saving Of A Group Of Randomly Shaped Spires Made Of Rebar And His Cultivation Of Apple Trees Will Make History

This Blog Post Is In Honor Of My Uncle Nicholas King And Will Partially Introduce My Family, Mainly On My Mother Ardis King Hyde’s Side…

Robert Nicholas King, who passed on April 3, 2012 at age 79, helped protect the Watts Towers. To read more see the Los Angeles Times Article on how Nicholas King helped save the Watts Towers of Los Angeles and allowed the unusual sculpture to become world-renowned.

Nicholas King was my mother’s middle brother out of three, all younger than her. His first name was Robert, but when he started working in Hollywood and off Broadway, because there was another actor named Robert King, he dropped his first name and went by his middle name Nicholas or Nick for the rest of his life.

When he died of complications from dementia, Nicholas King had lived in a nursing home in

Santa Rosa for three years. After he passed away his sons, Silas and Julian, my youngest cousins, and their older sister Sarah and brother Sam, just a few years younger than me, planned a memorial for their father appropriately enough in the movie theater in their hometown, Point Arena, California on the Mendocino Coast. For more biographical information, see the

Nicholas King came to Point Arena in a round about way, having left Hollywood for the 1960s hippie scene in San Francisco and in turn having dropped out of the hippie scene in San Francisco to move to “The Land,” a community land cooperative near Point Arena rich in Redwood forests and fertile bottom land along the Garcia River. Nick was glad to get away, to drop out, as they said in the

1960s. His departure from Hollywood occurred not long after he had tried out for a lead role in a film and landed the part. However, due to life complications, he was not able to accept the role. The actor who did take the part became a star largely on the acclaim he received from playing that character. I don’t think my Uncle Nick ever completely recovered from that missed opportunity. He had great confidence, poise and will his entire life, but his smooth surface was also ruffled deep underneath

by a subtle self-punishment that came up in unusual ways. In some respects he was one of the most optimistic people I have ever known, yet he also could get down on himself and circumstances and on some occasions felt that people were out to get him.

The Land was a paradise both won and lost, with an idyllic plan of sharing land between 10 families who were close friends, but whose relationships went on the rocks at times, finally culminating in a deep support and

love of each other and their film and TV actor representative turned sustainable logger, apple farmer and apple nursery and tree cultivator, as he faded into the confusion that took over his brain in his final years. When it was all over for Uncle Nick, nearly the entire Point Arena community and many from all over the Mendocino Coast down to San Francisco and even Los Angeles and beyond to his niece, Gwenn King, as far away as Wisconsin, all packed the Point Arena Movie Theater to celebrate and mourn the life of a

local innovator, artist, lover, horticulturist, gardener, farmer and family man, who charmed his way through life and into the hearts of those he turned his good looks and joyful, wise and impish smile upon.

Point Arena is the second farthest west point of land in California; the farthest west point lying not far north at Cape Mendocino. To reach Point Arena, you either drive up a curvy Highway One along the Sonoma Coast through

Gualala from Jenner and Santa Rosa, over the mountain from Booneville and Ukiah or down the Pacific Ocean Mendocino Coast from the town of Mendocino. To read more about my trip up the Sonoma Coast to Point Arena, see the blog post, “Northern California Beaches: Misty Sonoma Coast.”

As a young actor in Hollywood, Uncle Nick not only was a regular on TV shows and had small roles in several films, but he also loved to watch films. Over the years I

remember watching movies with him at the Point Arena Theater and other theaters, but also on VHS or DVD at his house on The Land or at Rough Rock with my parents. How fitting that my cousins planned his memorial in the Point Arena theater, where all 230 seats were taken and many mourners were standing, on both the main floor and the mezzanine. The service consisted of a slide show of still photographs of Nicholas King with his first wife, Kate, his second wife Jewls and

his children, friends and other family. After the slide show, many of Nick’s friends stood up to talk about him. Afterward people munched on the potluck feast laid out on the tables, while a music DJ played Nick’s favorite songs, relatives gathered outside to catch up with each other’s lives and inside there was even a little dancing. I had not seen my cousin Johanna and her husband Simo for nearly two decades as they had lived and raised three children in Europe. Nick’s brother

Van King, Johanna’s father, was there with his wife Linh, neither of whom have I seen much for the last 10 years. Van’s other daughter, his eldest, architect Caitlin King Lempres Brostrom had published a book this last year called, “The Houses of William Wurster: Frames for Living.” Just as Julian King, Nick’s youngest son, began to lead the cleanup inside the theater, the Point Arena based poet, teacher, classroom entertainer, author, visual artist, sculptor and wild dancer Blake More appeared on the scene in her hippie trippy poetry painted, moon, star and seashell festooned biodiesel mercedes. She wore her funkadelic outfit just for Nick.

There were many other highlights, including a few stories from Nicholas’ good friend Julius Palocz. One of Julius’ stories illustrated Nick’s indomitable, undefeatable character. Apparently Nick and Julius and another friend or two had planned to put a new gutter on Nick’s house. It was a wooden gutter and quite heavy. They had three ladders, none of

They climbed up on the ladders, lifted up the gutter and of course inevitably, the gutter fell and broke. Nick told those present not to worry. He said they would do this, fix that, nip that a bit, cut off that, bring in this and it would be better and stronger than ever. And it was. At one point one man, who had started an entire apple orchard from Nick’s apple trees, asked the crowd who had obtained an apple tree from Nick. About 85 percent of the crowd,

probably over 200 people, had trees from Nicholas King at the Garcia River Nursery. I had planned to talk, but they wrapped up the sharing portion before I stood up.

I had thought about what I would say if I had the opportunity. I reminisced about my uncle and all the good times we had with him as a group of cousins, as well as those I had with him alone. I had eight cousins in the first round and four more in the

second marriage round. When the older cousins were coming of age, I remember the oldest sneaking off with Uncle Nick to hang out. They invited me into that group I believe once or twice, but mainly it was limited to those older than me. Uncle Nick was always the hippest uncle, the one that related the most to us kids, though we of course loved and enjoyed Van and Clint, the other two uncles and my mother, who my cousins called, “Antie Ardis.”

I remember visiting The Land as a boy, swimming in the Garcia River at the swimming hole, running half naked through the fields and riding with Uncle Nick on his bulldozer. I remember watching him mill Redwood logs with his portable mill, splitting Redwood rounds for firewood, smelling the muddy earth smell of the heavy chunks of freshly split Redwood. We fished for Steelhead in the Garcia River too. I remember helping him work in his apple tree nursery. He used to give me a mild, easy-going lecture on grafting fruit trees, or varieties of apple stock, or apple blossoms, or other diverse farming or gardening subjects. In later years I would visit in my van. I brought food and wine and we drank and told stories at night. Uncle Nick and I took long walks on The Land in the mornings, walking along the Garcia River. We sat in the sauna by the Garcia River in the afternoons like old Indians.

One time Uncle Nick came to visit me at my place in Pecos, New Mexico. We went out walking, as we always did, as a thunderstorm threatened. We decided to hike up onto a nearby mesa where there

was an ancient Native American Pueblo burial ground. The burial ground was hard to find. Many times I had been up on that mesa and never seen it. To track it down we had to wander around through the pinion and juniper forests, looking for just the right opening in the trees. Suddenly the sky opened up and we were drenched in a torrential downpour, trying to take shelter among the trees as lightening and sheets of rain deluged upon us. As we sought shelter among the trees, we suddenly could make out the

low rock walls and shapes of stones that marked the burial ground. That particular hike to the burial ground, neither of us ever forgot. Somehow between the rain, the drenched red earth, huddling under the trees being surrounded by flashes of lightening and the mysterious sacred ground before us, we bonded like I never have with any other human being before or since, except perhaps my father and mother and a girlfriend here or there.

One Christmas just before my mother died, Uncle Nick came to visit us at Rough Rock in the Northeastern Sierra Nevada. While the snows whistled outside, we sat indoors near the fireplace, put together a 1000 piece puzzle and talked. It was a good Christmas. The last time he visited Rough Rock, he and I sat up late one night outside in front of the house watching a large fire burn out the stump of the Hyde family’s favorite oak tree. Our favorite shade oak tree had to be taken out because its roots were clogging the septic tank. Uncle Nick and I talked

about roots. We talked about family issues: control and anger, after all we are an American family. Yet American families can share great love too. There has always been love, camaraderie, fun and kindness in the family. In the early days, everyone knew how to keep up a good smile, even when someone in the group was mad at someone else under the surface and everyone knew it. There was always some issue or another, but there was also a bond and a joy in togetherness,

especially among us cousins. We sat at a separate table from the adults, which was both the wisest and the dumbest arrangement possible. I remember one Thanksgiving dinner where we cousins had a contest at the kid’s table at my Grandmother’s house, to see who could make the wildest, messiest, mashed-potatoes-squeezed-between-teeth face. Nick’s daughter Sarah won.

rebellious way, but more often in a hip, fun way. He had a way of making anything interesting. His photography of people showed a deep sense of understanding. He also made some excellent historical documentary black and white photographs of Point Arena being nearly wiped out by a huge storm in the winter of 1983. A few of his friends and family brought together these images in a self-published book called, “The Great Disaster at Arena Cove.” Nicholas King’s legacy as an environmental activist in groups such as Friends of the Garcia River and Save Our Wild Salmon, as a farmer’s market seller, a community member and artistic thinker, lives on in his children and his nieces and nephews, all the next generation and their children too, in Point Arena and everywhere people knew him.

Many people celebrated his life in the Point Arena Theater that day, May 12, 2012. We took our time to think back and socialize as Nick’s friends and family all together one last time. Yet, after it was over, it felt good to move away from the crowd, to go back to The Land and sleep among the Redwoods, to awake with

Kim King (Ben King’s Wife) Watching Johanna’s, Caitlin’s And Her Own Children, The Next Generation, Point Arena, California, copyright 2012 David Leland Hyde. Nikon D90.

the dew and smell the sun on the apple blossoms, to drink in the cool morning air as it blew gently over the quiet meadows of The Land that was Nick’s home.

More on the Mendocino Coast, Mendocino and Fort Bragg to come in future blog posts…

Do you have an uncle or other relative with whom you have a special connection?